The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.26

c12.26

If, continuing our journey eastward, we at last arrive in China, we are so much the more certain to discover Hâritî there, as, according to the evidence of Yi-tsing, « the portrait of the goddess-mother of demon sons (Kwei-tseu-mu-chen) » was already in his time (end of the VIIth century) to be met with in the country. In fact, under this same surname, pronounced Ki-si-mo-jin, she has pushed her way much further still, as far as Japan. A simple inspection of her modern images, whether representing her under her usual mask or, by a curious survival, in her proper guise as an ogress (pl. XLIX), will prove that the type has not, any more than the name, been so travestied by the local interpretation that one can hesitate as to its identity; even in the absence of any traditional designation, it could be divined simply from the child nestling in his mother's lap or walking by her side. In China itself matters are not quite so simple, and a new element seems to have intervened to complicate the problem. Has the personality of Hâritî been engrafted upon that same native goddess who, according to a certain interpretation, had been identified with the Indian Bodhisattva, Avalokiteçvara? Has she simply been absorbed into the vogue of the feminine forms of the latter and considered as one of the numerous avatars of his inexhaustible grace? It is not for us to decide, any more than to unravel the origins of the curious legend which tends to make of « Kuan-yin with a child » a virgin who is a mother only by adoption. But what we believe we can affirm, by reason both of the fundamental identity of the worship offered and of the exterior analogy of the iconographic types, is that the innumerable statuettes, either seated or standing, in which « the Great Mistress with the white robe... just because she is the patron of childless people, is represented with a child in her arms, which makes her strongly resemble the Virgin Mary (¹) », are only succedanea of the Indian and Serindian images of Hâritî (pl. L). Finally, and consequentially, we must likewise recognize the latter under the exactly similar features of the Annamese Quan-Am, who, « seated on a rock and draped in a robe with wide plaits, bears in her arms a child, which has caused her to be surnamed by our soldiers the Holy Virgin (¹) ».